Building caricature Joel Pett, Joel Pett is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist of the Lexington Herald-Leader. His work also appears in USA Today.

Ghosts of the Holocaust Ian Buruma, IAN BURUMA is the author, most recently, of "Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance," which received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He is a professor at Bard College and a contributing editor to The Times' opinion pages.

The Great Exception William T. Vollmann, WILLIAM T. VOLLMANN is the author of numerous books, among them, "Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means," and, most recently, "Poor People."

Remaking the world in six days Michael Oren, MICHAEL OREN, a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center, is the author of "Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East," which won the Los Angeles Times Book Award.